But we really mean killing when we say harvesting. Or processing. Which are both nicer words for what amounts to murder. Whether you’re yanking onions from the ground, ripping pumpkins off the vine, or removing the head from a chicken, it all ends up dead and on the table. And I think that’s just fine. I’m all for growing/raising/harvesting/murdering…whatever you want to call it.

Our garden was quite the murder scene this year. And by that I mean it was a big FAIL! We started out strong. I made tons of notes on different veggies and different varieties. We bought seed trays and started them in plenty of time for things to sprout, grow, and harden.

But everything went to hell because life gets busy and weather doesn’t cooperate. So we ended up with a lot of dead plants. But dead in the not useful way. I managed to kill over 300 hundred plants including a variety of herbs, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and sunflowers.

We’ll try again this winter but scale it back and time things better. It will also help if I actually get things planted in the garden in a timely manner. That was another factor in the Great Garden Disaster of 2018. The potatoes were the only things that went in at a somewhat acceptable time. Everything else was late (like middle of July late) or didn’t go in at all. So we got lots of nice looking plants and vines, but very little off of them.

I did find out that even though the started tomato and pepper plants looked like hell, they did beautifully out in the garden. The tomato risers that Tracy and Evan built also worked amazingly well, and I think smaller versions would work for other viney veggies.

Here are my sad beets. They weren’t completely sad in this picture, and I actually was hopeful we’d get at least a few small ones this year. But notice how some of the leaves are missing or half missing?

That’s because we had this to contend with…

The turkeys and chickens played a major role in garden issues this year. Anything that actually got big enough to pick had all sort of holes from these guys. Next year we’ll be putting a fence around the garden. It won’t keep them out completely, but they won’t be able to just take over, either.

Our end of year vegetable total was about 50 pounds of potatoes, a ton of summer squash that nobody else ate so the pigs got it all, 10 good sized zucchini, a couple of bags (sandwich sized) of tomatoes, and about two dozen small onions. Oh, and two very sad little carrots. The blueberries, raspberries, and apples were also a complete loss this year, but I can’t take credit for that. Weather seemed to be the biggest factor and the majority of people I talked to had the same issues with fruit and berries.

So that’s the garden for this year. There are still some tomatoes out on the plants that I’ll pick and put in the freezer, and I may get a few more decent onions. But for the most part everything is done and I would rate this gardening season as a bust.

“The other day. I saw a bear. A great big bear. Oh way up there!” Ok, so if you didn’t go to Camp Bird during the summers of your youth, you may not be familiar with the song. But the message is the same. The other day (Friday to be exact) I saw a bear. He maybe wasn’t a great big bear, but he was big enough. I wasn’t terribly surprised to see him because he’d made a visit to the turkey coop only a handful of hours prior and left with two of our turkeys. Asshole bear.

Friday morning I went to let the birds out and saw this on the turkey coop door:

We had a fisher cat in the yard only a few days before, so I figured he must have been around, trying to get in for a meal. I opened the door and the waterer, which is pretty big, was tipped over. I had just cleaned the coop so I was irritated, but I figured the birds must have gotten into a squabble and knocked it over. I picked it up, headed back out the door and saw this:

There were large chunks hanging from it (I pulled them off before thinking better of it) and at that point, I knew something really wasn’t right. The broadbreasted turkeys have some mean claws, but nothing that would have done that type of damage to the wooden frame. Finally, I noticed this:

Originally fastened securely, the hardware cloth was torn from the building and crumpled quite impressively.

Wooden chunks on the floor of the coop and the window from the outside.

This was our first real attack on the birds, and even though you know it’ll happen eventually – we do live in bear country – you’re still not quite prepared for it. Especially when you realize the bear got away with some of these:

And left you with:

As mentioned, he came back later in the afternoon to see what else he could find. The keets were squawking up a storm so Javi Bad Dog and I went out to check on things. The bear popped out of the woods behind the coop, pleased as he could be. I went running down the yard (in my socks, once again), yelling and clapping like a crazy lady. Luckily the bear was feeling accommodating and went back into the woods. Javi Bad Dog was completely oblivious to the bear until after it was gone.

We looked around and it seems like he tested a first window before moving to the window facing the woods, where he would have had more privacy to work:

We now have an electric fence around the coops, and hopefully that will deter the bear when he comes back.

It’s a bad year for bears – the blueberries took a hit with the heat, the drought at the beginning of the summer, and now a lot of rain. The apple trees are also thin, and I was told the acorns are also bad this year. So I can’t blame him for going after an easy meal of turkeys and meatball chickens. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’ll be skipping our bear tag this year.

When you live in New Hampshire there are certain things that are expected of you. You’re expected to drop the ‘a’ off the end of words and insert ‘er’ (and vice versa), ski, grow a beard, and wear flannel. If you’re able bodied and have something to tap, you’re also expected to produce syrup. It doesn’t have to be a large quantity – enough for one breakfast is acceptable – and it can be a thrown together operation – just so you do it. About a week and a half ago we finally joined the rest of the syrup producing population and tapped our first trees…

Tapping a tree and collecting syrup is a pretty straight-forward affair. For optimal collection the temps should be in the low 40’s (Fahrenheit) during the day and the mid-20’s at night. You then have to locate a tree that will produce sap. Ideally you’ve taken the time over the summer and fall to locate good candidates. We didn’t, but we have two very large, old sugar maples on our property that we were pretty sure would work. If you don’t have maples, or you aren’t sure what type of maples you have, don’t worry. There’s actually a fairly extensive list of tapable trees. Maples work well because of the higher sugar content in the sap. 40 gallons of sap from a sugar maple are needed to produce one gallon of syrup. In comparison, it takes 100 gallons or more of birch sap to make one gallon of syrup.

Some items you’ll need for tapping a tree are a drill with a 7/16 inch bit, a hammer, a spile (also known as a tap or spout), a bucket, a lid, and a hook (for hooking the bucket to the spile). If you’re half-assing it because you’re new to the whole tapping process, zip ties and bungee cords are also recommended.

You’re looking for a tree that is at least 12 inches in diameter. You can use more than one tap per tree if the tree is big enough (over 20 inches), but we stayed with one tap per tree for this year. After identifying a tree, examine it to find a good place to drill. You want to drill into the tree between two and two a half inches at a slight upward angle. You can use a twig to clean out the hole (oops) and then insert the spile, tapping gently with the hammer.

Once the spile is in place you should see a clear liquid dripping out pretty much immediately. There’s actually a little drip of sap in the above picture, about halfway down. It looks exactly like water. At this point hang your bucket on the hook. If you forgot to place the hook on the spile before pounding it into the tree, pull the spile out, insert the hook, and re-insert the spile. If you haven’t quite figured out how to make the hook, spile, bucket, and lid all work as one, whip out your zip ties and cinch that bitch together. Because at this point your hands are probably frozen and you no longer care about looking authentic.

We collected our first sap 24 hours after tapping and got about a gallon and a half between the two trees. The weather was on the colder side so the sap flow was slow and there was quite a bit of ice. The ice has a very low sugar content (we tried some) so it can be thrown out – this just means there’s less water to boil out of the sap. (Note the bungee cord and zip ties in the first picture.)

It’s recommended that you boil the sap within seven days of collection. We have about three and a half gallons sitting in the fridge waiting to get boiled down – and that will be tomorrow’s adventure.

Most people around here have chickens. Depending on who you talk to the chickens might be farm chickens, backyard chickens, or pet chickens. The people I’ve talked to enjoy having their chickens because, let’s face it, chickens are fun. And most people tell me that having chickens is fairly low stress. Until something came in and ate all of their chickens. And then, distraught, pissed off, or just frustrated by the whole process, many people end their chicken adventure.

We knew that we would have chickens on our farm because of the insane tick population and because we wanted eggs. We also knew that free ranging our birds meant we had the potential of losing a quarter to a third of our flock from predators, sickness, stupidity (the chickens, not us), stupidity (us, not the chickens), and death sentences. As we’ve progressed through winter, we found that our estimate was pretty accurate.

About a month ago I looked outside and found the guineas out in the trees. This isn’t something to be alarmed about because the guineas like to perch high when the mood strikes them.

I thought, “what are those foolish birds doing up in the tree?” and grabbed my phone and took pictures and video. As I was taking pictures I started paying more attention to the area around the coop and came across this:

What you’re seeing are marks in the snow from the wings of birds freaking out. One or two might be a couple of roosters fighting. But when you have them all over it means a predator came in. In this instance, we know we had two somethings come in because of the tracks. Probably coyotes, one smaller and one bigger. We quickly counted chickens and found out we had a significant number missing. Tracy found one of the largest Ameraucana roosters in the woods still alive but with a huge tear in his back (he died that night). He found our large Barred Rock rooster dead in the woods. Tracy said the smaller animal must have had this rooster because he could see where it had to drag the rooster through the snow and kept dropping it. The rooster finally got lodged between trees and the smaller animal left it. My little Bantam Cochin hen, Tilly, was also gone and we suspect she was taken easily because of how little she was. Tilly was the worst for me because she was our only pet chicken.

We also found several chickens scattered around the property. A group was hiding out in the front of the house and another hen was way out in the yard, tucked up in one of the huge pines.

I had the chickens out for monitored play time around the middle of January and one minute everyone was hanging out and the next there was a large coyote coming down the hill, almost to the coop. The chickens were all calm as could be, standing around without a care in the world. I ran outside, yelling and cursing at it to get the fuck away from the chickens (who were staring at me like I was crazy). It finally turned around and went back up the hill but it took its time and then stayed up on the ridge watching.

A few weeks after that I was looking out at the back and noticed something moving in the orchard.

He nicely stayed in the orchard and then turned back and went into the woods behind the pond.

Our latest predator encounter was with a very lovely Fisher Cat. Tracy caught him on the game camera taking a dead rooster (check out our Face Book page for the video).

Which brings up another part of owning chickens. What I like to call “flock control”. We have roosters in our flock. Simeon Smith is our main rooster and he’s honestly one of the nicest roosters I’ve ever seen. He’s fairly gentle with the ladies and he has no problem beating the shit out of a rooster who isn’t nice to the ladies. But we have a lot of roosters, Simeon can’t be everywhere at once, and roosters become redundant.

The Triplets are a perfect example of redundant roosters. Three Sumatra / Cochin crosses that looked pretty much the same.

Our plan was to leave the roosters alone until they started showing aggressive behavior. Things were fairly quiet and then one of the triplets started attacking Old English hens. Breeding is a part of coop life if you have roosters and sometimes breeding can seem a little, let’s say unromantic. If the hen doesn’t seem distressed and the rooster gets through the breeding fairly fast I’ll leave them alone. But the OEs are about a third smaller than the full sized roosters and this guy only went after the OE hens. So he was put on the execution list. His brothers were quickly added to the same list (and met similar fates) when they started going after hens, one after another, during feeding time. I ended up grabbing the remaining two triplets and then watching the hens. It’s amazing how calm things are in a coop when you don’t have aggressive roosters fucking everything up. Needless to say they were dead that afternoon.

So there you have it – two of the brutal realities of chickening. Combine those with the fact that chickens are heartless killers and cannibals, and you might ask, “why bother having them at all?”

There’s nothing like fluffy little chicks, a mother and her babies, roosters crowing in the yard, keets calling from the trees, and farm fresh eggs. That they’re vicious little raptors is actually part of their charm, too.

It’s funny where destiny leads us. Some people are destined to help others. Some people are destined to be famous. And still others are apparently destined to raise and kill meat chickens. I happen to fall into this last category. My destiny was predicted by my oldest sister with the creation of a business card about 25 years ago…

We grew up on a farm where we ate a large portion of what we raised and grew. I don’t know that I appreciated it when I was a kid, but as an adult I am certainly grateful for the skills I learned in my youth. After watching how fast I could kill a chicken, my husband was also appreciative – and a little nervous.

One of our biggest goals for living in New Hampshire and starting a farm is self-sufficiency. Because we moved almost half-way through the year, we knew the first year would be a lot of trial runs, which meant starting small. A small garden with just a handful of different vegetables, hatching out a few more egg layers (ok, the laying flock didn’t stay quite as small as it should have), and raising a small number of meat chickens.

If you ever get the crazy urge to raise your own meat birds, the first thing you have to do is find a reputable hatchery. We bought Jumbo Cornish cross chicks from Cackle Hatchery. This chicken is a cross between a commercial Cornish chicken and a White Rock chicken. They’re produced as a commercial meat bird and grow so fast that their legs can actually give out because of their weight. They also tend to fall over and die from a heart attack if you let them grow past the recommended age (approximately 10 weeks).

About a week after you order, you’ll get an early morning call from the post office letting you know your chicks have arrived. You’ll walk in and you’ll be able to hear the pissed off peeping immediately.

But there is something truly charming about looking into the holes of the cardboard box and seeing this:

These guys were only a couple of days old but you can see that they were already getting wing feathers, something that doesn’t usually happen for about a week.

When you open the box don’t be surprised if one or two chicks didn’t make the journey. Cackle throws in a couple of extra just in case someone dies before arriving. We lost one but everyone else was quite healthy looking.

Aren’t they cute and fluffy? And yellow? And identical? If you’ve raised layers, you’ve probably noticed that even if you only have one breed of chicken, they have some individuality about them. A bit of color variety, feathers that lay just a bit different, and of course, lots of different personalities. That’s what makes them fun to watch. Meat chickens are not like layers. They eat, drink, and poop. And that’s it.

We moved the meat chicks into the coup at around two weeks. They were quickly outgrowing the brooders and they created so much poop so fast that the garage was starting to smell.

The layers were not impressed with their new roommates. At this stage in their lives, there isn’t a whole lot to say about them. They ate and kept getting bigger.

This is how they looked at about 25 days. Notice the legs on these suckers…

They were also already developing a much heavier breast.

This guy is a Sumatra Bantam Cochin cross (Tracy calls them Tillimatra’s because the Bantam Cochin hen’s name is Tilly). This chick is about a month older than the meat chicks but much smaller in body size.

The next few weeks consisted of eating and popping. We finally felt they were big enough that they could hang out in the main coop with the layers.

You can see them in the back of the herd of chickens. It was one of the snowy days so nobody was particularly eager to go out, but the meats more or less spent all of their time inside. Eating and popping (are you noticing a trend here?…).

There are a lot of good reasons to raise meat birds. You know what your birds are eating, you know how they’re being treated, and there’s something quite satisfying in knowing you were able to grow something to feed you and your family. But there’s also a lot of reasons that raising meat birds is a huge pain in the ass. They’re filthy, they eat a ton of food, you have to clean them out about 10 times more often than layers, and they’re dumb as rocks. I watched one of the roosters try to jam his head through the chicken wire to get at the pan of food on the other side of the wire. All he had to do was move about two feet through the door (like the layers were doing), but nope – instead he kept bashing his head into the wire. Over and over and over again.

We butchered our meat birds just after 10 weeks and I have to say, even though it was cold, windy, and rainy as we did it, and our toes were frozen by the end, our backs ached from bending over, and the boys swore they were going to have dreams for weeks of plucking feathers, it was a very happy day.

For a trial run, it was pretty successful. We have a list of things we’ll do different next year when we get a larger batch of meat birds. A different coop arrangement, an automatic plucker, and butchering during a warmer time of the year. But two things were confirmed. The layers are heartless little bastards – they hung around us the entire time to see what we were doing and steal feathers, and farm raised chickens are delicious.

During a recent conversation with my sister, she mentioned that I really needed a DIY project to write about. I agreed with her, and it just so happened that I had the perfect project waiting patiently in a garbage bag in the garage. That’s right, folks – It’s time to bring out the babies!

Like many girls, my sisters and I played with dolls while we were growing up. As we got older, things became a little more dangerous for our dolls. Hair got dyed funny colors, then it got chopped off. And eventually, a few even started on fire (mom beat our asses for that one). During the baby doll project, I found that I still enjoy dolls. At least, taking their heads off.

Some items you’ll need: a few baby dolls, fishing line, an upholstery needle, buttons (I recommend the two-hole variety of medium size), a pliers, a needle-nosed pliers, leather gloves, some type of lighting.

The dolls I used were out in the weather for some time so they already had a nice icky dead look to them. This was especially true for the dolls with hair. So start with the baby doll and take the head off. It sounds easy, but depending on the age and condition, this can take some effort. I will also caution those who find babies out on the side of the road like we did – beware of the peeing babies! You will end up with all sorts of foul fluid on you if you brace the baby against your leg and squeeze too hard while pulling the head off!

Once you’ve removed the head, you can either install the fishing line for hanging the head or remove the eyes. I swapped these steps with different heads and found it really didn’t make a difference. We’ll start with stringing the head…

I found that a heavy duty upholstery needle worked well to string the fishing line through the top of the head. I used the needle to go from the outside first, threaded the needle, and then went from the inside using the the needle nosed pliers. I then went through the top of the head another time so that I’d have a loop with the line and both ends of the line inside the head. (As you can see from the picture, I did wear a leather glove for this part of the process, which made pushing the needle through much easier.) I tied my ends on a two-hole button to keep the knot from slipping through the head.

All of the baby dolls we collected have eyes. The scary blinky eyes that get stuck all of the time and look extra creepy. While I appreciate the creepiness, I wanted to have light coming out of the eyes, which meant removing them. In the picture showing the button up inside the head, you can also see two bulging pinkish things just inside the head. They look like hamster cheeks that got packed a little too tightly. Those are actually the eyes. The best way I found to remove them was to take the pliers and just pull gently at the rubber/plastic that’s coating them. Again, our dolls are quite weathered so the material was a little brittle and sort of baked onto the eye. Once I got enough peeled away I pressed on the eye from the outside until it popped out into the head or at least came out enough that I could pry it out the rest of the way. I did press too hard on one of the eyes and it ended up ‘popping’, which was a little disturbing, even though it was a doll. As an added bonus, not only do you get a nice soulless look to the doll, but you get a bunch of eyeballs to use later!

Once the eyes are out of the way, and you have the head on a string, you can start playing with your lighting options. I’m happiest with the little flickering candles. They give the head a good, eerie flickering glow, they’re easy to install, and I think I paid about $2 for six of them. Another option is a string of battery operated lights. I bought several strings at the the dollar store and one longer string for about $5. The longer variety has 11 feet of wiring and a bigger battery box so you do need a larger head if you use that version of lights.

I got lucky with the first head – the flickering candle was a perfect fit. The second head was too small for the candle, and the third head was too big for the candle.

I liked the strings of lights because they put a lot of light into the head, and you have color options. What I didn’t love was the glow spots that were created inside of the head. But, they ultimately did the job. The strings do take a bit of arranging so that all of the light isn’t stuck in the top of the head, away from the eyes and mouth. The smaller set has the on and off switch at the bottom end of the box, making it easily accessible when the head is hanging up. The bigger set of lights has the switch on the side of the box, but still pretty easy once you get used to it.

The top head has the flickering candle in it, the second has the smaller string of lights, and the third has the 11 feet of lights. I do like how the second head looks like it’s combusting from inside…

I hung our baby heads in the front of the house from a very craggy looking tree that was practically screaming for baby heads. They make quite a statement, even during the day.

And as you can see, they’re quite delightful at night!

So there you have it! Flashy, fashionable, and a real piece of art! Or at least, pretty kick-ass Halloween decorations…

This post is rated M for mature audiences due to sexual situations and violence…

We have a sort of tradition in my family. We like to send disgusting pictures, stories, and articles to each. This can be pictures of a surgical procedure one of us had, something one of our kids did, but it’s often inspired by something we’ve found in our gardens. The top picture was sent by my sister. In case you aren’t sure what’s going on in the picture, it’s slugs having sex. They’re attached to a string of slime, which is attached to the side of her house. (You’re welcome.) The bottom two pictures were sent by my cousin after a discussion on wasp nests. I found them horrifically fascinating, and I really considered stringing up one of the baby dolls in an apple tree to see if the wasps would go for it.

Today it was my turn to share. I actually have to give credit to my sister-in-law, because she’s the one who pointed these guys out. She was looking at our garden yesterday evening and asked me if I had seen the green worms on my potato plants. I had noticed the plants were looking chewed on, but didn’t examine them too close because I was planning on pulling them this weekend. When I went out with her to look, this is what we found:

Introducing the Tomato Hornworm, also known as “Eww, eww, eww, that’s disgusting!!” Ok, not really. The scientific name is Manduca quinquemaculata, but I’m pretty sure that translates to “eww, eww, eww, that’s disgusting!”

They’re easily recognizable because of the markings on their bodies, as well as the horn on their asses. They would be almost charming if the ass-end was the head. Like fat, green little unicorn ponies.

Although they’re called tomato hornworms, these suckers were on my potato plants, and they actually stick to plants in the nightshade family, including eggplants and pepper plants.

They’ll completely decimate your plants, as you can see in this picture:

One of the ways you can tell if you have them (other than your plants suddenly looking like complete shit) is little berry-looking worm poop. Think the berries in Captain Crunch Wild Berries:

If you see berry poop, look over your plants and you’ll probably find these guys:

They do the most damage in the caterpillar stage. This time of year, the big caterpillars will start dropping off of the plants to begin burrowing into the ground for the winter. Like this guy:

They stay in the ground over the winter and emerge as big moths in the spring. The moths are often referred to as “sphinx”, “hawk”, or “hummingbird” moths. The moths eventually lay eggs on leaves, and the whole nasty process begins again. So the question is, how do you get rid of the little bastards?

Till heavily in the spring. This kills about 90% of the caterpillars still in the ground. You can also plant things like dill, basil, and marigolds around your plants to keep the caterpillars away. Wasps are also your friend when it comes to hornworms. The braconid wasps actually lay eggs on the caterpillars, and the babies eat the caterpillars from the inside out. So if you find one of these guys and he looks like he has rice stuck all over him, leave it alone! The wasps are working.

If you do find them on your plants, they’re pretty easy to pull off (but don’t squeeze too hard!). Chickens supposedly eat them, but ours weren’t impressed. One of the girls pecked at one a couple of times and then left it alone. If your chickens are picky, or you don’t have chickens (why don’t you have chickens!?), you can put them in a bowl of soapy water. Like so:

They get pretty pissy when you first put them in but die fairly quickly. I ended up with a fairly healthy worm-crop – eleven. This doesn’t count the three we pulled last night. The most I had on one plant was four. I will warn you that if you accidentally dump your bowl of worm-water over, you may get this:

Javi Bad Dog was a big fan.

After I had already taken mine swimming, my cousin mentioned that lizards and tarantulas are HUGE fans of hornworms because there’s no exoskeleton. They’re also full of nutrients. We just happen to have a nice, big bearded-dragon in our house, so I madly looked over all of the potato plants. On the very last one, I came across this guy!

Yay! The lizard was over-joyed and had him gone in about 30 seconds. Check out https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100018478174998 to see the video.

If you’re feeling really adventurous, or if your tomatoes took a beating from the worms, get some payback! Eat those bitches! Fried Green Tomato Hornworms – the recipe can be found at: https://www.thedailymeal.com/recipes/fried-green-tomato-hornworms-recipe

Chicks are like children. They’re all sweet and innocent when they’re babies…

And we really like them when they’re sleeping…

But as they get older, they get funny looking, moody, and they start to smell bad…

When that happens, there’s only one thing you can do – move them in with someone else. Like these fine, unsuspecting folks!

Yesterday was moving day for the oldest chicks – about 26 chicks in all, made up of a mix of Barred Rock, Ameraucanas, Old English, Sumatra, and Sumatra Cochin crosses. Along with making the garage smell horrible (even the boys had started to comment on it), the chicks were starting to give us looks. Looks like, if I could, I would peck your eyes out.

So Tracy and Gus spent the bulk of the day making a temporary enclosure in the chicken barn for our broody teenage birds.

Tracy and I added the wire in the afternoon, and they were moved in soon after.

There’s a very nice video on our FaceBook page that shows the chicks getting to know each other (fighting) and their new home. They got it figured out fairly fast, and this morning everyone was sleeping together. Behind the waterer, of course, instead of under their light.

The older birds still aren’t sure of what to make of it, and so are mostly ignoring the chicks. We can’t wait until Simeon realizes he’s supposed to keep track of all of these, too. They still have a few weeks before they’ll be allowed into the run, and then another several weeks before we allow them to free range. By then, they should be out of the moody teenager stage and safely into the young adult ‘you’re stupid and I know everything’ stage. It’s at that point we’re expecting the older chickens to start asking for new accommodations.